A. 巨蟹宮 B. 金牛宮 C. 獅子宮 D. 処女宮 E. 人馬宮 F. 双魚宮

G. 双児宮 H. 天蠍宮 I. 天秤宮 J. 白羊宮 K. 宝瓶宮 L. 磨羯宮

This week featured a plethora of multiple-guess entries. Those familiar with KYPC, however, would probably assume that this did not in any way lead to a greater quantity of correct answers. And you would be dead wrong. Clearly my readers are well-attuned to the heavens, because there were more things guessed right this week than any I can remember in recent memory.

Theoman, of course, outdid everyone else in his typical shameless manner by getting not one but two correct answers. Despite it not having anything to do with his own signs, his eyes leapt immediately to Virgo the Virgin at D (we will refrain from making any comments related to personality regarding this choice). Then, looking inward, he sought out one of his own signs, and he decided that J was Aries the Ram because rams are white. It would be great to make a joke about it, but unfortunately I don’t think there’s really anything else on this list that is usually thought of as white. Goats, maybe. Anyway, he was correct, though he could have made it a lot easier on himself by remembering that the second character means sheep.

As usual, A Fan picked out a seemingly meaningless method of guessing and, also as usual, it earned him an undeserved right answer (not that there’s such a thing as a “deserved” answer in this game). He slipped up with his former sign, misidentifying C, which is in fact Leo the Lion (though, as misidentifications go, you could do worse than mistaking a lion for a crab. I wouldn’t recommend getting especially close to either). But he came through with his new sign, picking out G as Gemini, his favorite baseball team. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.

Shirley came up with a correct answer as well, and she came so close to the difecta. Perhaps because of years of harsh treatment at the hands of her offspring (of whom at least one and probably two were the same sign as her), she was able to spot Cancer the Crab at A. Actually, the first character has nothing to do with claws; it simply means “giant.” The crab is the second one. As for her new sign, Gemini, she had it narrowed down to two but, sadly, picked the wrong one. However, perhaps more impressively from a kanji standpoint, she picked up on the fact that the first character in both G and F (which is Pisces) refers to there being two of something.

But one participant this week was entirely out of alignment. First she ran away from F, the fish, because they’re pretty horrifying, I guess. Then she attempted to measure things with B, Taurus the Bull, and I have no idea how that would work, other than that it wouldn’t. One possibility is that Dragon’s confusion (as her name might suggest) stems from the decision to exclude Ophiuchus the Serpent-Bearer from the list. And there is a reason: Japanese, unlike English, has different words to distinguish between Cancer the zodiac sign and Cancer the constellation. Those listed here are for the signs, and, as far as I am aware, Ophiuchus only has a word for the constellation. So apologies to Dragon for upsetting her heavens and knocking her out of her house, but if she has complaints, she can take them up with the dictionary.

Oh, and I still have to identify the rest of this lot. First I will horribly confuse half my readership by saying thing that mean nothing to them: E is Equius, H is Vriska, I is Terezi, K is Eridan and L is Gamzee. Then I will (hopefully) placate them by explaining that E is Sagittarius the Archer, H is Scorpio (do I really have to explain what that is?), I is Libra the Scales, K is Aquarius the Water Carrier, and L is Capricorn the Goat.

Anyway . . . let’s get it arted in here! The next puzzle will be about identifying important Japanese art forms. And, just in case you’re not familiar with Japanese art forms for some strange reason, I will briefly describe them. From the world of theatre we are featuring the flashy, fast-paced kabuki, the steady, stylistic noh, the slap-stick comedy of kyogen and the puppet theatre of bunraku. From the world of poetry we present the classical tanka, and representing the visual arts is the ukiyoe woodblock print. Pick out whatever sounds the most interesting.

I’m guessing that both B and D are theater because they have a character in common, and theater is the only category that has more than one entry! But once I get past that brilliant (?) insight, I am . . . stuck! What the heck, I’ll say B is kabuki and D is noh. (Theatre, by the way? Since when did you become British?)

I see a couple of people in D manipulating from each end of the kanji what could be a couple of puppets. So, puppet theater, D.

I like the word “noh” for some reason or other. Though B looks too buttoned down for my taste, it has a certain striking stylistic quality that is sort of steady, so I’ll call B noh, even if I don’t quite like it.

One more shot at improving my odds: The characters in A look like they are convulsed with laughter. A, kyogen.

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